‘Critical incident:’ Ald. Bob Donovan says officer dies after being shot on Milwaukee’s south side

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan tells FOX6 News a Milwaukee police officer who had been shot near 12th and Manitoba on Milwaukee’s south side has died from his injuries. The shooting apparently happened some time between 9:30 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 6.

“This is been an incredibly difficult year for the department — now the third officer that has lost his life in the service of Milwaukee. So it’s a sad day for this community,” Alderman Donovan said.

Officer shot near 12th and Manitoba in Milwaukee

A source tells FOX6 News the officer has been transported to the hospital -- and a suspect is in custody.

Milwaukee police squads are seen at Froedtert Hospital.

Milwaukee police squads at Froedtert HospitalMilwaukee County Sheriff Earnell Lucas shared this statement in a news conference at the same time the investigation at 12th and Manitoba unfolded.

"Our friends from the Milwaukee Police Department were invited, but were called away this morning. And want to keep the entire department, their members in our prayers," Lucas said.

#2 BYU Cougars football • American football • Brigham Young University • National Signing Day • Utah Utes football

Message before National Signing Day is BYU football is full of opportunities for new recruits

Jared Lloyd Daily Herald

3 hrs ago

Brigham Young players take the field before the game against Northern Illinois at LaVell Edwards Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, in Provo.

Evan Cobb, Daily Herald

Football players are competitors, guys who want to earn playing time as quickly as possible.

That’s why athletes considering joining the BYU football team had to be drawn to the fact that the Cougars had more than 25 freshmen get playing time in 2018.

“We were definitely capitalizing on that messaging, letting people know that that is the attitude of our staff,” said Alema Fitisemanu, BYU player personnel coordinator, in a conference call on Monday. “If you can play, you are going to see the field. The best guy plays. That creates good culture on the team. They all know they have to play. It’s not just going to be given to them. It’s a good way to display the culture we have on our team and I think that is positive for our recruiting.”

There are also some extra openings as current Cougar players like running back Riley Burt, defensive lineman Tevita Mo’unga and offensive lineman Jacob Jimenez have already announced their intentions to transfer

“Those are great kids and we are sad to see them go, but sometimes they need to go find where their opportunities are and that’s a positive thing,” Fitisemanu said. “We want to make sure we are helping them in that regard. As far as opening up spots, it does create a lot of opportunity to turn over the roster and find talent and replace them with good guys.”

Fitisemanu explained that BYU tries to always have a few more guys in mind, just in case something happens.

“With transfers and natural attrition, we kind of look at it in recruiting as we should always have three or four guys we are thinking of that we can slot in there,” Fitisemanu said. “Recruiting looks at it as an opportunity to build the team and make it even better. Transfers add a new wrinkle. I don’t know if it is negative or positive. I don’t think the entire process is quite settled yet.”

The Cougars are expecting to sign a few additional guys on National Signing Day on Wednesday, although the bigger class was the 14 players who signed in December.

“We signed most of our guys in December,” Fitisemanu said. “We’re really excited about the entire group. I think we were able to satisfy the things we had needs at.”

Everyone is waiting to see if BYU adds to a thin group of running backs, as no specific running back signed in December and the Cougars lost three (Squally Canada and Matt Hadley to graduation, Burt to transfer) from last year’s roster.

“We are hoping to sign running backs,” Fitisemanu said. “We are aiming at multiple guys, so it could be one or more than one. That’s one of the things that is fluid at the moment, because we do have some options. We’d like a fast guy who getting to the second level can take the top off and take it to the house but our goal is to find a featured back who can wear out a defense.”

As always, many of the guys who have signed (and probably others who will sign) will elect to serve two-year missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before joining the program.

Memories from BYU Football Signing Day’s in the past

PROVO - Doesn’t it feel good that Signing Day is here? Regardless of any ranking that BYU receives, Signing Day is always a special and ultimately fun day.

I’ve been following BYU football and recruiting since I was seven years old. It’s hard to describe, but I’ve always had a love for personnel, transactions, and ultimately college football recruiting.

National Signing Day was always viewed as a holiday in the Harper household. The first Wednesday in February has always been met with excitement, and it still is to this day.

That’s why I’m thrilled to be working on an incredible network here at 247Sports that have allowed me to showcase my passion for BYU football recruiting. I have a lot of fond memories over the years and I wanted to share a few as this Signing Day marks my 25th BYU football Signing Day I’ve followed.

I got hooked on recruiting because of Steve Sarkisian. The No. 1 Junior College quarterback in the class of 1995 out of El Camino JC had me hooked as a seven-year-old. My dad had a subscription to H.B. Arnett’s Cougar Sportsline and I would read the latest edition when it arrived in the mailbox and then I would ask my dad questions about his thoughts on these recruits.

I kind of laugh thinking of how the written word would get fans (including myself) over recruits. There was no internet, no 247Sports, no Hudl, to do personal research on these players. The summaries typed up by H.B. Arnett or Dick Harmon of the Provo Daily Herald (at the time) were my only links to who these recruits were back then and I would soak it all up, especially Sarkisian.

The idea of a Catholic kid who was the first team Gridiron Wire All-American from the JUCO ranks picking BYU was something that had me hooked on recruiting. Then I learned he was a mid-year enrollee and he would be competing in spring ball, I was even more hooked and wanted to keep learning about this recruiting stuff.

One of my favorite things that I miss was the day after National Letter of Intent Day the USA Today would put in their sports page every signee for each and every school in the country.

In the 1999 class, I remember USA Today specifically mentioning in their paper BYU running back commit and Oregon Player of the Year Luke Staley and how he turned down a late push from the Nebraska Cornhuskers to play for BYU.

I used to call into KSL SportsNight with Greg Wrubell when he would have Greg Biggins on the show, yes THE Greg Biggins, and I’d ask Biggins questions on the show about BYU’s class as a kid and now I’m honored to say Biggins is a good friend and someone I work with.

In 2002, like so many others like me, my passion for recruiting went to another level with the advent of TheInsiders.com network and the hiring of head coach Gary Crowton to BYU.

LaVell was never much of a Signing Day type of guy, but Crowton was all about recruiting. I remember my dad getting a letter in the mail to attend a Signing Day event, the first of its kind for fans to ask questions to Gary Crowton and recruiting coordinator Paul Tidwell about the 2002 class.

You bet my dad checked me out of school that day to attend this thing. That’s one thing that I always love about recruiting and Signing Day is that it has always been something my dad and I have bonded with over the years and it’s no different to this day. But the 2002 class, I remember walking into LaVell Edwards Stadium’s old Cougar Club room with the glass window pillars all over the area and old pictures of BYU’s Hall of Fame inductees dotting the walls. My dad and I were the first ones there and we were greeted by Paul Tidwell and a spread of Hogi Yogi to enjoy and talk crootin’! Man, it was a beautiful time.

I’m asking questions to Tidwell and he says, “excuse me guys, I gotta take this call. It’s Walt Williams.” I turn to my dad and tell him, Walt Williams is going to be so good. Even though I didn’t see a damn thing on the guy and the only thing I’ve seen to this day on Williams is a blurry Big Foot-esque photo courtesy of ESPN 960’s Ben Criddle. But Walt had those five-stars next to his name so I was all in.

Gary Crowton walked into the Cougar Club room on crutches after suffering an injury after the Liberty Bowl and he was disappointed in losing out on Haloti Ngata but was still excited about landing a Top 25 recruiting group in that 2002 class. They had just landed Ben Olsen, Jake Kuresa, Scott Young, Chad Barney, and of course, Walt Williams. Big names with big star ratings coming out of the gates in 2002.

Crowton took questions from the 15 or so people that were there for the event and one person asked, “Is Scott Young related to Steve Young?” Crowton laughed and I remembered he said we hope he will have a Steve Young-like impact on defense.

Guys like Brandon Gurney continued to feel my appetite for all things BYU recruiting. It just kept growing and growing. Couldn’t get enough.

Who can forget BYU landing Ofa Mohetau over the Miami Hurricanes when they were at their apex again as a program? Then in week one against Georgia Tech, Marcus Whalen steps on Mohetau’s foot and we pretty much never saw anything from Mohetau again in Provo.

I could go on and on and there have been great stories in the Kalani Sitake era already and there will be many more great recruiting stories in the future. Keanu Saleapaga picking BYU over Colorado on Signing Day and giving the Cougars a rare hat ceremony victory, Troy Warner signing with the Cougars, Mique Juarez taking an official visit before ultimately committing to UCLA, Zach Wilson’s rapid-fire recruitment and saving the 2018 class, and the pursuit of many, many running backs in 2019.

2COMMENTSHappy Signing Day! Proud to be the Publisher of Cougar Sports Insider and I’m excited to cover many more Signing Days in the future.

Not a subscriber? Sign up now for a seven-day free trial and to get access to everything Cougar Sports Insider has to offer, including daily the best team and recruiting coverage on BYU sports. Don’t forget to sign up for our Cougar Sports Insider Newsletter. It’s free and a great way to get daily updates on BYU football, basketball and more delivered straight to your inbox. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

'Modern Family' has an incredible legacy. There may never ever be another show like it again.

The veteran sitcom creators Steve Levitan ("Just Shoot Me") and Christopher Lloyd ("Frasier"), reasoning they'd find more Hollywood success together than apart, came together expressly to make a network sitcom. They scored a hit out of the gate in 2009 with their story of the extended clan of Claire and Phil Dunphy - only to have their differing sensibilities lead to a falling out by the second season.

But instead of acrimoniously ending things, they agreed to split custody of the ABC show, alternating which episodes each oversaw. "Modern Family" went on to became one of the biggest television phenomena of the current age.

ABC on Tuesday announced that this fall will mark the show's last season, its 11th. "Chris and Steve have created one of the most seminal and iconic comedies in television history," ABC Entertainment president Karey Burke told reporters at the Television Critics Association in Pasadena, California, in announcing the ending of "Modern Family."

It's indeed tough to overstate the success of the series, which regularly has drawn more than 10 million viewers per episode and is one of only two sitcoms in history to win the Emmy for outstanding comedy five different times, all consecutive.

Yet for all its success, the show also has a complicated legacy. In many respects, it helped define the current business landscape. And that's why it - and anything like it - can probably never exist again.

At the time that "Modern Family" entered the scene, the entertainment world looked a lot more like it had for decades and a lot less like it does today. Netflix has just begun streaming its content instead of just sending it by red envelope. Original programming outside of the traditional television set wasn't on anyone's mind - "House of Cards" was more than three years away from debuting. Apart from one win for "Sex and the City," the broadcast networks had taken every outstanding-comedy Emmy ever.

And "Modern Family" was positioned to reap all these benefits of a linear world. The show, produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television, would gather titanic audiences for a sitcom. For much of its run it averaged at least 11 million viewers per season, boosted by the way it represented a changed definition of the American family (and the ethnic, sexual and racial identities that can be seen on an American family sitcom). In its third season it averaged nearly 13 million viewers, many of them in the coveted 18-49 demographic.

In contrast, NBC's "30 Rock," another repeat comedy-Emmy winner from the 21st-century, averaged under 6 million most seasons.

The ad sales were similarly monstrous and old-school. At its peak 30-second ads on "Modern Family" went for a quarter of a million dollars, among the highest ever for a sitcom. (That is, when the show wasn't engaging in some bolder forms of sponsorship.)

By putting its own spin on a familiar motley-family conceit and docu-comedy style, the show turned things around for ABC. Far removed from its TGIF heyday of the 1990s, the network needed comedy hits. "Modern Family" came along just in time, its Wednesday slot not only lining its own pockets but giving a boost to other network sitcoms such as "The Middle" and "The Goldbergs."

Most importantly, though, it provided a charge to the wider landscape. "Modern Family" brought back the idea that a TV comedy, even as viewership and consumer mind-share began to fragment, could both be broadly watched and a critical hit. There have been some other long-running broadcast-network comedy smashes in the current era; "The Big Bang Theory" comes to mind.

But "Modern Family" stands out a single-camera comedy - cinema-style shooting, no laugh-track - that still garnered a massive audience.

And the show repeated the rewards. "Modern Family" generated not just the usual local syndication deals but a splashy one on USA Network, which paid as much as $1.5 million per episode. It even got sold and repackaged in places like Chile and Greece.

Its role was testified to by the Disney-Fox acquisition, as executives cited it as the kind of jewel that ABC wanted not just to air but to own. The show was so big that at the start of its cable reruns had the feel of a new series launch.

"Modern Family" even had some old-fashioned network-cast salary disputes a la the epic clashes between Friends and NBC/Warner Bros in the 1990s - the kind of thing that happened when the networks needed their stars in a way few streamers, with the elevation of brand and writer, rarely do.

And yet. All this success is a reminder of just why it was possible when it came on - and how it could never be possible again.

The end of "Modern Family," along with "Big Bang" at the end of this current television season, will also in all probability mean the end of an era. The highest-rated sitcoms now on broadcast television are either very new ("Young Sheldon") or very old ("The Conners"). The odds that any could achieve what Jay Pritchett and his Closet Empire did are remote at best.

Because the current landscape is too fractured, too diffuse, to give us broad comedy hits. At the very least it is unlikely to give us quality comedy hits; the people who can make them simply do not need a broadcast network's money when there's so much of it sloshing around elsewhere.

Not for nothing are the other broadcast comedies that lasted to their 11th season "Cheers," "The Jeffersons," "M*A*S*H - a who's-who of TV history, these are not tricks we'll likely see in the 21st century.

If you want an idea of how "Modern Family" comes from another business age, here it is: the show is not on Netflix. Yep. Not on now, never has been. Twentieth knew it could monetize the show much better with these syndication deals than selling it to a streamer.

The show's scripts have by wide consensus been declining creatively for a while, as writers exhaust storylines and reach for contrivances and guest stars. Many fans began dropping off the "Modern Family" wagon a while ago - its viewership began declining in the 7th season, a trend that has only accelerated since.

But the inevitable writerly ebb and flow of a TV show is only part of the story here, and doesn't hit at the more underlying business factors that will prevent a phenomenon of its ilk from happening again. "Modern Family" may be getting long in the tooth creatively, leading to its demise. But from a business standpoint, it's nothing less than a dinosaur, and its species could well soon be extinct.

‘Modern Family’ is coming to an end with its 11th season

Updated 8:00 AM; Posted 8:00 AM

“Modern Family” premiered in 2009 and has been one of the most awarded comedy series on television. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) (Jordan Strauss)

“Modern Family” will come to an end after its just-announced 11th season.

Now in its 10th season, the Emmy-winning family sitcom will return for its final bow on ABC in the 2019-2020 season. Karey Burke, the newly installed president of ABC Entertainment, made the announcement Tuesday during the network’s portion of panels at the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

The series, which hails from Christopher Lloyd and Steve Levitan, boasts an ensemble cast that includes Ed O’Neill, Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Sofia Vergara, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet in its depiction of a blended family in Southern California. It holds the distinction of being the longest-running comedy series on ABC’s schedule.

“Chris and Steve have created one of the most seminal and iconic comedies in television history,” Burke said in an official statement. “In its final season, there will be more milestone events that anyone who has been a fan of the series won’t want to miss.”

Questions surrounding the fate of the show, which is produced by 20th Century Fox Television, have been swirling as the show entered the double digits and crossed the 200th-episode milestone — not to mention comments from its creators suggesting the plan was to end the show with its 10th season.

But with 20th Century Fox preparing to become part of Disney, which also owns ABC, it seemed an 11th season was likely. The studio now falling under the same umbrella as the network would eliminate the license fee to an outside studio. And with the show’s off-network syndication deals, Disney would benefit from having additional episodes in the show’s catalog.

“Modern Family” premiered in 2009 and has been one of the most awarded comedy series on television — it has scored 75 Emmy nominations, with 22 wins to date (five for outstanding comedy series) — and has made its stars some of television’s highest-paid actors.

While the show has lost some steam over its run, it remains a strong scripted performer for ABC. This season, so far, averages about 5 million total viewers and a 1.35 in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 age demographic.

The statements from the show’s co-creators about concluding the series featured the sort of humor with which they imbued the show.

“For 10 years,” Lloyd said, “our characters have bravely faced turning points in life and moved through them to great personal enrichment; we have chosen a different path by doing one more season of ‘Modern Family.’”

Levitan added: “Even after 10 years together, we realized there are still some things our writers don’t yet know about each others’ sex lives.”

The runner, whose name has not been released, was jogging alone when he heard something following him on the trail. When he turned to look, a mountain lion pounced and bit him on the face and wrist.

The man was able to fight back by suffocating the mountain lion to death, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife's Northeast Region (CPW). It is unclear how the man killed the big cat.

He was then able to hike to a local hospital to treat his serious, but not life-threatening injuries, and report the incident to the police.

The man also reportedly did not have any weapons in his possession at the time of the attack. In other words, he was able to kill the mountain lion with his bare hands.

The police described the mountain lion as a juvenile and that the man killed the cat as an act of self-defence. State park officials found the body of the lion near the personal items the runner asked the police to recover for him. The body of the cat was then taken for examination to the state health lab and it reportedly weighed at least 80 pounds.

Mountain lion attacks are rare in Colorado.

"Mountain lion attacks are not common in Colorado and it is unfortunate that the lion's hunting instincts were triggered by the runner," CPW wildlife manager Ty Petersburg told the Denver Post. "This could have had a very different outcome."

The park closed temporarily following the attack to conduct an investigation, but it was re-opened on Monday evening. The parks service said that there are less than 20 mountain lion-related fatalities in more than a century, noting that the big cats are "elusive animals" who "tend to avoid humans."

However, CPW said that if people were to meet with a mountain lion, they should not run. "Running may stimulate a lion's instinct to chase and attack," it said.

It offered advice for people who would ever face such an encounter. "Face the mountain lion, stand tall, and make yourself appear larger by raising your arms and opening your jacket if you are wearing one. Never turn your back."

The parks service said that it's not game over if the cat attacks. "People have fought back with rocks, sticks, caps or jackets, garden tools, and their bare hands successfully," CPW added.

"If you have to fight, the parks service recommends targeting the animal's eyes and nose."